


Ally Maine: in profile

by CaitlynRose



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 19:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16792966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaitlynRose/pseuds/CaitlynRose
Summary: Everyone's alive and everyone's happy. That's it.





	Ally Maine: in profile

“So, I’m curious. You started your career as just “Ally,” but then at a certain point - quite a while after your marriage, actually - you went to "Ally Maine.” Why the change?”

Ally - bare feet, one leg tucked up under her on the couch - looks at the reporter sitting opposite. She thinks about it for a minute.

“It felt more... representative, I guess. Of who I am, y’know? Of the whole me."

“So, the Maine is…”

Ally shrugs a little. “The part of me that’s him,” she says simply, softly. She would have thought this was pretty evident, really, but she doesn’t mind confirming.

Then, because she’s used to pre-empting these sorts of things now: “Please don’t ask me what that means for feminism. I don’t really care what it means for feminism. I don’t actually think it means _anything_ for feminism.”

The reporter grins in response. She’s one of the nice ones, it seems.

Having had this woman in her living room now for thirty minutes out of the allocated forty five, things have gone - so far as Ally is concerned - essentially according to script. They’ve covered her music, and her childhood, and her future plans - because, sure, reporters want to talk about those things. Absolutely. They also, to a man (or woman, as the case is presently) want to talk about Jackson. Always, always Jackson, and it’s a tricky situation, for numerous reasons.

The first is that Ally is naturally an open book, and happiness in particular, she’s found, seems to have this funny way of bubbling over, almost demanding to be shared. At the same time, though, there’s something about her marriage - about her life inside these four walls - that just feels so sacred to her that the thought of some stranger turning it into clickbait sort of grosses her out.

The other thing is that a lot of the time, the questions these journalists ask her she actually cannot come up with much of an answer to.

Because the truth is, she doesn’t really remember what she thought about Jack before she knew him, back when he was already a big star and she was a catering assistant. Honestly, during that time, she can’t remember ever thinking very much about Jackson Maine at all.

She doesn’t know what went through her mind the very first minute she saw him. She can’t pick a favorite of his songs, or of _their_ songs, can’t cite the most special of all the places they’ve performed. She can’t remember when she fell in love with him.

What she _remembers_ is sitting in a grocery store parking lot, and the somersault in her stomach when he drew her ring finger into his mouth. When she let him do that.

She remembers the bike, and the buses and the helicopters, and at some point or another, the obvious understanding - of a sort she’d so rarely experienced in relation to anything else in her life apart from music - that she and Jack wouldn’t be apart again.

What she _knows_ are the things he will and won’t eat in a sandwich, and the things he needs to do every day to stay sober. She knows smooth, calloused fingertips on her skin when she’s warm and sleepy in the mornings, and his tongue in her mouth, and the _blue_ of his eyes like technicolor in the dawn half-light.

None of this is information that Ally is super keen to share with Susan from Rolling Stone, nice and all as she might seem - nor, in fact, is it information that Susan has even asked about. But it’s a matter of time, Ally can tell. She’s working up to her Jackson Section.

“So, speaking of your husband,” Susan starts, right on cue, "the way you guys have worked it so far seems to be that you’ve been involved a lot on his records, and he’s been involved a lot on your records, but y’all have never done a full one together. Rumor has it you’re working on something right now, though. Anything on the cards there that you want to share?”

“You know, not really,” Ally replies, all ease. “I mean, look. Jack and I sing together every single day in this house. Our songs, other people’s songs…we just always have sung together, and we really _like_ singing together, is the thing. We have a little less time to sit down and write than we used to, but we come up with stuff on the fly and…we definitely would like to have an album with both our faces on the cover at some point down the line. That’s as much as there is to it right now."

The words are barely out of her mouth when she hears the key turn in the lock, and she cranes her neck to look round.

Bright-eyed and windswept-looking, Jack clatters into the house, Charlie panting at his side, Caroline fast asleep with her mouth open in the stroller. Ally smiles at the sight of them all.

“Well, hey, speak of the devil,” she calls over towards him, and he smiles back at her - that perfect smile - before glancing uncertainly towards Susan. Evidently, he hadn’t been anticipating company.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I though you guys would be done by now,” he says.

Ally waves away his concern. “Almost. Susan this is my husband Jackson. Jack, this is Susan Kostecki from Rolling Stone.”

The two of them exchange greetings, Ally assumes, but she really doesn’t know, distracted as she is by Charlie, who bounds right over and lands on top of her. She throws her head back and laughs, her breath slightly taken away by the sheer force of her fur baby’s affections.

“Well, you can see who the favorite is,” she hears Jack saying dryly to the reporter.

“Uh, I don’t know, you might want to fact check that one later, Susan,” she manages to interject, wrestling the dog off her a little bit. “Charlie is definitely a daddy’s boy really. Aren’t you, Charlie? Yes, you are! Did you have a good walk? Did you get all your energy out?”

She turns away from Charlie then and looks over at Caroline, her chest tightening in that now-familiar way. There could be no more beautiful 10-month old on God’s earth, of this Ally is sure. “Looks like _she_ definitely got all her energy out, huh?”

“Yeah, out like a light as soon as we got back in the car,” Jack says, and this does not surprise Ally one bit. Their baby, as both she and Jack are all too aware, sleeps extremely well when in constant motion, and much, much less well when not.

“Listen we’ll get out of your hair,” Jack’s continuing now, "let you guys finish up. Come on, Charlie!”

“Oh, don’t go on my account!” Susan hastens to add. “Really. I’d love to get some thoughts from you for the piece, actually.”

And Ally, for her part, can’t help but smile at the tone of voice, the subtle change in demeanor somehow. She’s in no doubt that Susan _would_ like some "thoughts for the piece,” but something tells her this woman’s enthusiasm is not motivated entirely by the pursuit of journalistic excellence. It sort of amuses her, really, the way women get around Jack; or, more specifically, the way he seems to entirely fail to notice it.

“Well. Whaddya wanna know?” Jack asks then, getting right to the point, as ever. He’s behind Ally now, his hand lingering easily at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, and she leans into his touch instinctively.

The reporter seems to scrambling a little, evidently not quite prepared for the prime opportunity that seems to have presented itself on a plate.

“Uh…well. Okay. Tell me this, Mr Maine. When you met Ally, obviously she famously was working as a waitress, performing at a drag bar. What were you first impressions of her back then?"

At this, Ally has to work not to roll her eyes just a little. She likes this woman well enough, she really does; it’s been a fine half hour. But, two out of ten for originality on this one.

Jack, though, seems to be taking the question seriously, actually thinking about it. “You know what’s kinda funny to me,” he says a moment later, his voice low and gravelly, "is that people always seem to think that when we met, we were so different. And I guess we were, in some ways - thank God we were, in some ways,” he adds wryly. "But the point is, is that it mostly felt like were were just… I don’t know. The _same_. Right?”

He squeezes her shoulder when he asks the question, and Ally just nods, reaching one hand up absently to brush her fingertips against his.

“ _And_ ,” Jack says then, almost as an afterthought, "she was the best fuckin’ singer I’d ever heard in my life. Bar none. You can go 'head and quote me on that.”

Ally lets out a laugh then, twisting around to look up at him, her eyes shining.

“Alright, you can go now,” she says jokingly.

But really, it is Susan that Ally suddenly feels has just _got_ to leave.

Because she and Jack have to finish up a song for their album (the same one she’s pretty much just lied through her teeth to Susan about) and soon she’ll need to feed Caroline, and her father - god help them all - is arriving later to stay for the weekend.

She doesn’t have much interest, she finds, in talking any more about her life. She just wants to live it.

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, I just want them to be alive and happy. And what I'd ideally like is for other people to write stories that keep them both alive and happy, and I can just read them!


End file.
